by F S Naiden
The army reached the delta in springtime, as the Indus began to flood. The entire region became a motile sea of mud, turning the Gulf of Arabia brown for several miles below the river's mouth. The banks of the Indus changed without warning. A second glance and a stretch of bank disappeared, taking a hastily abandoned village with it. Alexander found even the town of Patala, located well above the flood plain, abandoned by its people. He needed help to feed and move his army, so he chased them, and when that failed, he negotiated to lure them back.65
Then came another, bigger surprise—the ocean. Twice a day, waters from the Gulf pushed sixty miles upriver, creating a tidal bore. At high tide, even the mangrove swamps slipped from view. As Alexander’s admiral, Nearchus, later wrote:
When the tide carrying the whole mass of the sea reaches the river channels, the rivers reverse course for miles. Nothing can withstand them. Suddenly the river bottom appears, and just as suddenly the land is under water. Ships end up sailing on dry land.
These tides appear at the new and full moon for three days. … At the new moon, the tide comes on so strong that people living near the river's mouth can hear it as though hearing the roar of battle. Soon the waves come charging over the shoals with a great hiss.66
When Alexander and an advance party arrived on the shore of the delta, they knew nothing of this dangerous tide. They assumed they could safely draw up their boats and leave a few men to guard them while they explored. When the tide came in, those men almost drowned. The party regrouped and made for higher ground many miles upriver, where most of the army had pitched camp.67
Alexander now began to make preparations to leave India and return to Mesopotamia. He dispatched generals to gather food and forage, cut wood for a new fleet, and seek out native shipwrights and sailors. Curious about the number and location of the Indus River’s mouths, he dispatched Nearchus on voyages to chart the coast of the delta while rounding up vessels and checking for pirates.
On one such trip, Nearchus and his crew saw the greatest of all Indian specimens. As he wrote:
The crew saw water blowing out of the sea at daybreak. A hurricane might have stirred it. When men familiar with the region explained, the crew was amazed. Animals swimming in the sea blew the water into the air.68
Whenever the sperm whales drew near, the men panicked and dropped their oars, and Nearchus went forward and ordered the crews to row as if going into combat—raise the battle cry with a shout, pull hard, and make a racket.
That way the crew had the nerve to go on together. So, when the ships drew near these beasts, the men would raise the battle cry … the trumpets would sound, and they would row as noisily as they could. When the beasts neared the front of the ships, they would be taken aback, and would dive. Not much later, they would surface astern and blow water again.
Nearchus sympathized with his underwater foes:
Some of the beasts went aground. A low tide caught them and left them in the shallows, or storms thrust them ashore. That way they sickened and died, and the flesh dribbled off them. People built houses with the bones. Some of the ribs were big enough for bearing beams.
Here, in the waters south of modern Karachi, the Indian venture came to an end. Alexander erected a commemorative altar along the coast and thanked the Greek and Egyptian gods for his success. Amon, he explained, had given him an oracle about this ceremony. This, his only oracle about India, had come from Egypt. Aristander did not contribute to the Indian campaign, and neither did any other diviner.69
Before leaving India, Alexander brought some bulls aboard a ship and sailed out to sea for the last time. Once out of sight of land, he sacrificed to Poseidon, just as he had at the start of the expedition. As his men flung the carcasses into the water, he prayed to the god for a safe return to Mesopotamia, and he also prayed that no one should ever sail farther into the Indian Ocean. When he turned and sailed back toward shore, his lookouts could not see any land for some time. The reason was that the shoreline was low and treeless. Then the subcontinent materialized, like a crease between the sea and sky.70
many versions of the Alexander Romance include a story of how the king ventured not only out to sea, but also underwater. In this Byzantine version, Alexander describes his adventure in a letter written to his mother and Aristotle:
We traveled through a desolate region toward the sea, seeing the sky and the earth but no birds or other animals. For ten days we no longer even saw the sun, just mist. Once we got to a place on the seaside and pitched camp, we stayed for some weeks.
In the middle of the water lay an island, and I wanted to explore what was there. I ordered a fleet of boats built, and about a thousand of my men and I sailed in these boats to the island, which was not far from shore. As we approached, we heard the voices of men laughing, but we could not see them. They spoke Greek, but we could not understand what they said. Some of the troops swam ashore to explore, but straightaway crabs came out, dragged the men into the water, and killed them. Frightened, we returned to the mainland. As some of us were disembarking and walking along the beach, we saw a crab coming out of the water onto dry land. It was as big as a breastplate, with legs a foot long. We attacked it, but metal could not break through the shell and the creature’s legs fended off wooden spears. After we picked it up and crushed it, we found seven valuable pearls inside. No one had ever seen pearls like these.
I wondered what else the boundless sea had to offer, and ordered an iron cage be built, and inside the cage a glass jar three feet wide. Then I ordered that a sleeve be put in the bottom of the jar for a man to put his hand through. I wanted to submerge with the sleeve shut and learn what was at the bottom of the sea. When I got down, I would stick my hand out, catch fish, and then pull it back and shut up the sleeve. Once I built this device, I ordered a 308-foot chain, and gave orders that no one pull me up unless I tugged on the chain by jostling the jar. “Once I get to the bottom,” I said, “I’ll tug, and you raise me.”
Once I had got ready, I entered the glass jar for my foray into the deep. After entering by a lead hatch, I closed it, and descended 120 feet. A fish banged the cage with his tail and they brought me up when I tugged the chain. I tried again and the same thing happened. I tried a third time, descending 308 feet, and saw many kinds of fish circling me. Then a huge fish came and swallowed me and the cage and brought me to shore a mile away. After tearing up the cage with its teeth, the fish belched me up on the dry land. Three hundred sixty men sailed to the rescue, but the fish dragged them all away along with their four boats. Half senseless and dumb with fear, I fell down and did homage to divine providence for saving me from the frightful beast. I said to myself, “Stop striving for the impossible, Alexander, lest you lose your life fishing in the deep.” I found my way back to my troops and ordered them to quit this country by retracing their previous line of march.71
Anonymous illustration of Alexander and the diving bell in the Roman d’Alexandre, fifteenth-century French vellum.
Belgian National Library, ms. 9342 fol. 182, CHT169065.
Like the story of flying on birds’ wings, this story of submarining described limits. Mortality set one limit. Alexander’s time in India showed that religion set another. An invader with no local god to help him had made unwinnable wars on priests, monkeys, and rivers. The companions refused to go on. Now they would have to retreat.
After playing many parts well, Alexander had played the part of Indian rajah according to his own script, and this script had failed him. Why? Which god should he blame? Amon, who gave bad advice in a very foreign country? Dionysus, who got Alexander drunk with power? Zeus and his seventy days of rain? Sarasvati? Who was she?
Alexander had more gods to blame than ever, but also more reason to blame himself and not them.
10
Persian In-Laws
entering india resembled walking the length of a swimming pool with weights on. After the shallow end, the bottom sloped down toward the jungle, the Indus, and the floods
. Leaving resembled walking back, but with no water in the pool. One trudged out of India only to enter the bumpy plateau of the Makran Desert, in southeastern Iran. For fear of dying of thirst, few ventured into the Makran. Alexander was prudent enough to send in only some of his men, but imprudent, or brave, enough to lead them himself. He would make this march his personal failure, but let his soldiers and camp followers suffer for it. Unlike Napoleon in Russia, he would never admit he was retreating.1
That summer of 325 Alexander and the generals met and divided the army in three parts. The king would take a fast-moving force of infantry and cavalry, and some baggage, on the 1,200-mile desert route from India to Susa, the nearest center of communication and transportation. The king would stay within a few days of the shoreline, so that he could send or receive supplies by way of a second force, traveling by sea under Nearchus. The sea route might well be faster and easier, but the Macedonians lacked the ships to put the entire force on board.2
Nearchus would carry enough marines to meet any threat from pirates, and he would perform the hydrographic tasks Alexander always insisted on—find rivers and seas, map and traverse them, pinpoint potable and navigable waters, worship local gods, establish an emporium or two. Alexander knew some companions would turn down the command, and told Nearchus so. That got the modest Nearchus to volunteer. The two men had been childhood friends. Among leading companions, only Hephaestion and Ptolemy had known Alexander as long.3
Alexander and Nearchus would both lead light, fast, vulnerable forces. Craterus, Parmenio’s successor, would lead the heavy force by the only known road, which went from the Indus valley through the Bolan Pass to Kandahar and the province of Arachosia. Since the army had taken the Khyber Pass into India, the generals wanted someone to take the other pass, the Bolan, out. Then they would know the topographical fundamentals of the easternmost part of the empire. Unlike Alexander, Craterus could begin administrative work very soon, in Kandahar. From there he could travel passable roads to fertile country just east of Persepolis and Pasargadae. He would arrive from the north, and Alexander, coming west, would meet him. Nearchus could send a detachment inland, and meet, too. Then Craterus and Alexander would both head for Susa, and Nearchus would go back to the coast and continue sailing. After reaching the head of the Persian Gulf, Nearchus would sail upriver and reach Susa from the south. In Susa they would meet a second time.
The Route of the Expedition from India to Babylon, 325–324 BC.
Ancient World Mapping Center.
Engraving showing the Bolan Pass, by Louis and Charles Haghe, 1842.
Photograph: Paul Fearn, Alamy Stock Photographs.
Why not move the whole army by the safe route assigned to Craterus? That would have saved time, lives, and money. Rather than think of these advantages, Alexander thought of his personal competition with Cyrus the Great. Cyrus, he heard, had tried to cross southeastern Iran and reach India, but had to give up for lack of supplies. Alexander would do better. His fleet, sailing along the coast, would resupply him, and the prevailing winds would let the ships keep up. Thanks to Herodotus, Alexander knew that the few inhabitants along the way were so poor they ate little but fish, and had no horses or mules. They were no threat.4
The generals thought of this plan as another, grand version of the formula Philip had devised for the Macedonians decades before: Divide the army. Put the young men on horseback, under a young leader, and send them on a raid. Put the old men in the infantry, under an old leader, and send them into battle. Philip had used this method on the battlefield. Alexander and Parmenio used it in Anatolia, Syria, and Persia. Alexander, Craterus, and others did the same in Central Asia. In India, they added boats and elephants to the formula.
All in all, some 120,000 combatants would participate, plus many thousands of camp followers. Alexander had brought somewhat fewer people into India, and far fewer people into Asia at the start of the expedition. The return would be an epic in its own right—far bigger than the returns of Homer’s heroes, not to mention Jason and his crew of fifty-five Argonauts.5
while nearchus built ships and recruited rowers and pilots, and Craterus marched his part of the army up the Indus valley, Alexander waited in the Indus delta for the summer heat to pass. He had decided to bring some of Puru’s elephants with him, along with the indispensable Phoenician sutlers and the portable bureaucracy led by Eumenes. In all, he led some 60,000 to 70,000.6
He did not expect to encounter much opposition, or much in the way of Persian administration over the vast region known as Gedrosia. He and his staff remembered the Gedrosian nomads they had chased away from the baggage train five years before, as they traversed the Helmand Valley. The main enemies would be thirst and hunger. Each man needed up to a gallon of fluids a day, and thousands of animals needed a dozen times as much. Temperatures would top 100 degrees Fahrenheit.7
The army crossed the first stretch of the Makran Desert in a single night, a feat of marching comparable to what they achieved on the coast of Sinai, and then descended to the small, fertile plain of Las Bela, in modern Baluchistan, at the opportune time just before the harvest. Some of the people surrendered, but more ran and hid until the main body had passed on. Alexander left Leonnatus behind with some of the best of the light troops. The natives turned on him and defeated him in skirmishes where they took advantage of the terrain. Then they made the mistake of gathering their forces and fighting a battle in the open. The Macedonian troops slaughtered them.8
Alexander now learned that he had erred in regard to the prevailing winds. In the fall, when Nearchus would be sailing, the monsoon would cause headwinds. The admiral would not be able to travel alongside and furnish supplies. The local sailors who knew the seasonal winds had failed to inform the Macedonians.9
Alexander had no choice but to march on, food and fodder piled high in the wagons, and cross the Makran west of Las Bela. Unlike Arachosia and Sogdiana, the Makran had no oases, no big rivers like the Helmand, no inland seas like the Caspian. The mountains of this southern edge of the Iranian tableland drew close to the water, as in Anatolia, so the expedition headed inland, only to find just a few small, dry valleys leading into the interior. No native force guarded these valley entryways, for little worth guarding lay beyond. Even villages were rare. Rather than report strange buildings or customs, Aristobulus catalogued odd plants: the myrrh trees, plus tall, thorny mangroves growing in shallow salt water, and cutch trees with thorns so big and strong they ensnared hares and brought down passing horsemen. The garish rocks crumbled in a man’s hand, and the occasional volcano spouted mud.10
In early fall, the Iranian coast was no longer too hot for a lizard or a snake to cross the road without being burned to death. It was still too hot for horses to be ridden and not walked, or for men to march by day rather than by night. Monsoon runoff from the mountains provided water and greenery, but not enough edibles. One night a flash flood hit the camp and carried away some of the wagons, slaves, and concubines.11
Stocks dwindled, but no supplies came from the fleet that should have been sailing along the coast, a few days’ march away. The men went hungry, and the camp followers starved. The profits of the Phoenician sutlers went up as prices rose, and then fell as the men began to steal supplies. When Alexander heard the fleet was low on food, he ordered a convoy to take grain to the coast, but the troops stole the grain. Always enterprising, the Phoenicians gathered the gum from the myrrh trees that grew in this region, and packed the stuff on to their mules, but the men stole some of the mules. The Phoenicians also tried to gather nard roots, but failed, since the soldiers trampled the roots and used them, along with myrrh plants, as bedding.12
One of Alexander’s top mercenaries, a Thracian, led plundering raids on native villages, but these scattered places yielded no wine or even beer, and so it seemed that the natives did not make offerings to the gods. They venerated wild animals. A snake could stop a local caravan, and so could wild asses approaching in two groups. The Macedonia
ns found other customs peculiar, too. The natives attacked on foot, one man’s tunic tied to the next man’s, so no wounded would be abandoned. They bedded down a hundred yards from each other, each with his dromedary. And they were incorrigible. All these customs survived for 2,000 years, to be reported by wayward travelers in the nineteenth century.13
After a few weeks, the runoff from the monsoon dribbled away, and the army grew thirsty. Even a saltwater creek would be welcome, and the odd deposit of rainwater beside the road would be miraculous. When anyone found a water hole, many soldiers would rush toward it and plunge in, armor and all, only to drown underneath those piled on top of them. Alexander could not successfully order them to stop. He had to set an example of self-control, and he did it one day when scouts returned with a small supply of water from a hidden spring. They poured some water into Alexander’s helmet. The king took the helmet and poured the water into the sand. That showed men they must wait their turn.14
Farther on, they ate their animals, as they had in the Hindu Kush. Some of the men became delirious.15
After a sandstorm, the guides told them they were lost. Alexander led a mounted detachment toward the coast, relying on the stars to guide him. The sea was still there. Digging in the shale, his men found a watering hole. He sent word to the army to come and join them. The army would not die of thirst—not yet.16
After two months they reached the Persian outpost at Pura, some 500 miles from the Indus. From here rivers and roads led to the Helmand valley, Pasargadae, and Persepolis. The generals who commanded Parmenio’s old troops in Ecbatana had marched down with food and fodder. They had heard of the desert march and ignored rumors of Alexander’s death. Two neighboring satraps to the north also sent supplies.17